


My Own Secret Ceremonials

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Footage Not Found [22]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 05:17:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12523840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: The night before the war begins, Daryl goes to the cemetery to pay some respects. He's not going there to pay them to the dead.





	My Own Secret Ceremonials

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think there's enough stuff out there about Daryl and Tara, because I have to think they've had some interesting and difficult - and heartfelt - exchanges. 
> 
> The relationship tags are clearly not meant to be, like, active present tense, and there's no actual romance in this, but I tossed them in for background and to further situate this in time. For what it's worth, this is bethyl in my head because of course it is, but there's nothing here that says it has to be.

This was never going to be easy.

Thing is, of fucking course. Of course it's not easy, because nothing is easy. Nothing is ever easy. _Easy_ as a phenomenon is a thing that happens to other people, a feature of other lives; he observes it from a shadowy perimeter but never steps into its light. They don't know, the ones who live in that blessed circle. They have no fucking idea.

No, that's not fair. They do. They might. Some of them.

But they know it as a temporary thing. One by one he's watched them crushed, and one by one he's watched them slowly piece themselves back together and drag themselves to their feet, start walking, and sooner or later they're upright again, striding rather than plodding. They get ripped wide open and then after a long time they stop bleeding, and they're badly scarred but they heal. Over and over, they always heal. Or they heal enough, even if they're still so raw.

Even Maggie. Yes, even her. He doesn’t resent her for that but it's still true.

He doesn't expect that to ever be him.

He supposes that on some level he's okay with that now. To the extent that he can ever be okay with anything again.

Nothing is easy. Plenty of mornings - plenty of times in the darkest, smallest hours - it crashes in on him, in that first awful instant of consciousness, that he's still alive, and for a few moments that’s almost too much to bear. But he's here.

And he has to do this.

He's not going to look too closely at why.

Night Before. The fact is that he's waited too long, though he's unsure of the proper timeframe for something like this. Everyone is tense and everyone is handling it in their own way, which is familiar by now and not especially troubling. He's not tense. Not much point. So he moves among them like he always does and he watches, considers all these lives and how easily - _easy_ \- they might be snuffed out. They're withdrawing, holding onto various things. People. Places. The fragments of the lives some of them have only just begun to build.

He hasn't built anything. There's a garage, a bike, a bedroll and a sleeping bag and a storm lantern. There's a half-empty bottle of Old Crow that he tries not to touch; he fails regularly, because sleeping is as difficult as anything else and more often than not that bottle is the only way he gets it done.

He knows enough to know that he hates the person he's becoming, and he knows enough to know how little he can do about that anymore.

 _You gotta be-_ Fuck. Fuck that. He wishes so much that he could be who he was.

The bottle is buried under a sloppy pile of clothes. The bottle isn't the only thing that pile conceals.

Lights on in the houses, shadows moving behind the curtains. Voices, low. Laughter, thinly veiled desperation. Not in every one, but it's there. The streets of Alexandria aren't empty at this hour but they're clearing out as people retreat to their steps and porches if not behind their doors. Ten minutes ago he left Rick sitting in the twilight and cradling his daughter in his arms, his mouth lost in her honey-blond curls.

Not much to say to him. Not much to say anymore, period.

He didn't think about where he was going when he got up, but that's only because he intuited that he didn't need to. Halfway there he gets it, he gets why, and that's when he thinks _shit, this isn’t going to be easy,_ and now he wants to laugh because that's possibly the biggest understatement he's come up with in years.

Well.

He stares at it as it approaches, because that's how it feels, as if it's coming to him rather than him to it. It's lost in the dimness, only the barest outlines visible; the moon is waxing and bright but not risen yet. He hasn't been here in a long fucking time - not in waking life. But he knows each outline, each shape and form. He could navigate its rows blind.

So he instantly recognizes the shape that doesn't belong there.

Low, hunched. Crouched by the grave. He can see that she has her head down and her arms wrapped around her knees; a couple yards closer and he makes out that she's rocking very slightly on her heels. All at once and with an intensity that just about makes him gasp, he hopes she's not crying, because he's not sure how he would deal with that, and not just because he doesn't seem to cry much, not since the last quiet storm with Maggie in the cellar - and he's a man to whom tears always came far too easily and far too often and therefore made him a target in a way he could never prevent.

It's not that he doesn't want to. It's more that he doesn't give a shit.

This, though. Christ, please let her not be crying. It would be beyond shameful to turn and run but if she is, he thinks he might. Because it's too much. Maggie said what she said but he didn't and does not believe her, and he can't _stand_ to hear someone else wrestling through their tears to choke out that it _wasn’t his fault._

If one more person forgives him, he honestly thinks he might start screaming and never stop.

But she's not crying. She looks up when he reaches her, and there's enough light from the nearest house to throw half her face into meager illumination, and he sees no evidence of tears. No tracks on her cheeks, no shine in her eyes. She's dry, looking wordlessly up at him, her teeth working at her bottom lip. Thoughtful more than anything else.

He doesn't move. Until she gives him a single nod, and he sinks down beside her, sits, folds his legs and rummages in his pocket for his cigarettes. Pauses. Looks up at her, silently questioning, and she nods again.

The lighter’s flame is far too bright, and he blinks, squints, inhales and flicks it closed with something akin to relief. It's better in the shadows. He doesn't have to worry as much about what his face is doing, about how to arrange his hands. He can just sit and smoke, and gaze at yet another grave of yet another friend.

There will be more of them. But not one like this. Each one is distinctly agonizing. Hideously unique. A special nightmarish snowflake.

Jesus, _don't laugh._ Explaining why would be actual hell. _Just, whatever you do, don’t laugh._

“Hey,” she whispers finally, low.

He grunts. Actual verbiage strikes him as unnecessary. Possibly inappropriate.

She draws a slow breath. Then: “I wasn't sure I was gonna come. Thought it might jinx something. Y’know?” There's a stuffy quality to her voice. She might not be crying, but either she was before he got here or she's close to it now. “It's not goodbye. It's just… It’s not that. It can't be that. Can you say goodbye to someone who’s dead if you might be about to end up dead too?” Quiet laugh. It shakes at the end. “Wouldn't that be more like _see you soon probably_ or whatever?”

She's not actually asking him. But he does speak. Plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and looks at its sullen red end. “Means whatever the fuck you want it to mean.”

That sounds callous. Possibly because it is. He's all callouses.

If she's bothered by it, she doesn't show it. Instead she sighs. “Yeah. I guess.” Another pause. She rolls back to sit fully, still hugging her knees, chin resting on them. “She would hate this. It would be driving her crazy. But I don't think I could get her to stay here. She'd come. She'd make me let her. She wouldn't just…” This time her laugh is indeed perilously close to a sob. “She wouldn’t just _stay behind._ ”

No. She wouldn't.

“She didn't,” he murmurs, staring at the cigarette again. The red is darkening; he's not sucking enough air through it. It's going out. “She came along, that day. Didn't take _no_. Said she was ready.”

Rosita has already relayed all of this. Tara has known the story since she got back. He feels compelled to say it all the same.

“She wasn't,” Tara breathes, and he jerks his head up, because he's not exactly going to argue but he's not going to let this strong, smart girl say shit she knows isn't true.

“She was.”

“Yeah. She was.”

Instantly. Because she _knows._ Because you know the people you love, like no one else ever could, and in some ways that's the worst.

“She was tough.” The cigarette has gone out. There is no part of this that he doesn't utterly despise, though it’s a cold and empty feeling. “She was…”

Nothing is easy, and words are frequently the most difficult thing of all. Yet here they are, all at once and completely, crowding in on him and throwing themselves against the tightening entrance to his throat. The things he could say. The things he _should_ say. Maybe Rosita passed these things along and maybe she didn't, but either way he should say them, because it's _important,_ because it fucking _matters._

Not all of them are even things Rosita could have known.

What it was like, looking at her, at how scared she was and how determined she was not to show it, and knowing that he couldn't stop her, and the pain of that, because he's seen over and over what this world does to people like she was, but also there was so much pride under the pain and it put him on every wrong foot he had, which was and is all of them. What it was like when that fear didn't fade but instead intensified, and how she fought through it, beat it back, shaking with it but still going. Walking with her after, taking the tracks because what the hell and feeling almost _good,_ because shit, here was indeed a Good Person who the world hadn't killed, and she was tough and she made it and sure, she made it only through one day but sometimes - most of the time - one day is all you can ask for, and if you get it you're blessed.

She made it. And in the moment that ceased to be true, he was in awe of her.

He doesn't cry anymore. He clenches his eyes shut and that remains the case.

When at last he opens them, his head is tipped back and the moon is beginning to climb over the trees. Not quite full but close, heavy and golden. It's a kind shade. When he rests his focus on it, it really is _resting._

The cigarette has gone out. Been out for a while.

“I know you dug it,” Tara says softly.

It's a fist right into his gut. Not a sharp, quick jab; this thing is coming in slow fucking motion and it's bizarrely gentle, boring into him rather than punching. It crushes all the air out of him and he sits there, still gazing up at the moon - which swells and swells until it fills his entire field of vision. Like it's crashing down on him. Like he's being launched up into the sky.

Nothing he could say here could ever possibly be worth anything.

“I had to,” he whispers.

And here's the part where the forgiveness comes. Here's where it beats him down, where it _whips_ him, pounding him bare-backed into the ground until he's paralyzed and bleeding. It's only what he deserves but it's torture, this assurance that it _wasn't his fault._ Like they're doing him some kind of favor, sparing him.

Like how _she_ embraced him when she should have been hitting him, over and over until he couldn't stand up anymore, and then she should have kept on going until the world went away. Like how she should have beaten him into the fucking black. Like he wanted. Like he was _asking_ her for, and she never understood the language he was using. Like how that should have been her mercy visited upon him.

Here's the part where the forgiveness comes.

Except it doesn't. There's only more silence, until she breaks it with two words rather than those hateful four.

“I know.”

Even with the moon, he can no longer see her face. But he can tell she's not looking at him. She's looking up at it, her profile just visible, her lips trembling. Even though her voice isn't.

Maybe she’ll thank him. Fuck, that might be just as bad. Wouldn't carry the lead-pipe weight of forgiveness, but it's part of the same ruthless family of sentiment, and he doesn't imagine that he'd handle it much better.

_Thank you for digging a grave for the woman I loved after you got her killed._

But that isn't forthcoming either.

A breeze rushes over the wall and sweeps across the ground. It smells of decay: leaves, wood, flesh. It combs through his hair, pushes it not back from his face but further across his eyes, dappling the light like thick foliage. Hiding him. If he forced himself into that much self-reflexiveness, he's perfectly aware of what he would find when it comes to how long he's allowed it to get.

No. Not now. He shakes it back, looks at her.

And it doesn't hurt so much.

Oh, it hurts. It hurts plenty. He's not hurting for hurt. But there's something about how she's sitting, how she's not returning his gaze, something about the very quality of her breath. Something about _I know_ that went so much deeper than a grave.

It's so easy to forget that she saw what happened. In his mind now, he's alone with it. Might have been the only one there, before they ran and after. But he wasn't. They all saw him. Doesn't make it better, not one fucking bit, but they _were_ there, they _saw,_ and there are parts of this that they can't conceive of, but there's an abundance of things they very much can.

Denise got a grave. He gave her one because _it’s what we do._ For these people, the dear ones. For the ones we can't bear to let go of.

And if you can't give them one?

He has nothing left to say. That being the case, he should get up and go, leave her alone with whatever else she _does_ have to say that doesn't concern him. But as he's beginning to push to his feet, there's light pressure on his upper arm, a tug at his sleeve, and he stops.

Her, looking at him. Eyes shining but even now not crying, and she's shaking her head. She doesn't have to speak. It's clear enough.

_Stay._

He couldn't deny her that. Wouldn't deny her anything. So he does.

~

There's a window in the garage. He put his bedroll under it; he's never been able to sleep if he can't see the sky, and it's worse now since the cell. Lying there, the burn of cheap bourbon on his tongue and the bottle beside him - at lower tide than before - and staring up at that window, the moon once more in his eyes. Night before the day before. Nothing is easy, and he can tell sleep will be no exception.

Nothing is easy. But he gets it done. Each thing, he pushes through and he gets it done.

He wouldn't call this _trying_. He doesn't know what to call this. It's just a thing, and these days that's about the best he can manage. He doesn't know what that's worth. But he's guessing that Tara would tell him that's not worth nothing.

So that's something.

He turns his face away, closes his eyes, and his hand is creeping toward that pile of clothes and the last thing hidden beneath it. This part, this _would_ be easy. Would take practically no effort from him. The pile is very lopsided. Just one nudge, a bare minimum of upward pressure, and gravity does the rest for him. Most natural thing in the world.

No. He stops, pulls back. No. Not yet.

If ever again.

 


End file.
